Dragonet

No clue at all with this one but could be a juvenile? Raja Ampat, pretty shallow. Help appreciated

Several dragonets in my books and on the internet look somewhat similar but I couldn't find any that were clearly like yours. Going through my own images I found an arguably better match from the philippines. Not as pretty as your image but it does the job.

Interestingly, there was a quite similar one in the same area that has a black "moustache", shown below.

Reef Fishes of the East Indies mentions that the black moustache line is characteristic for the male mangrove dragonet which they name Callionymus enneactis. Now it gets complicated. Fishbase has an entry for C. enneactis but show an image from Jack Randall that is a very different dragonet. I'll check with Jack to see what is going on. Reef Fish Identification Tropical Pacific does not have C. enneactis but do show the corresponding image which they name Callionymus parvus (little sand dragonet). Going to Catalog of fishes, it turns out that this is an incorrect synonym, but that C. enneactis is also no longer correct because the genus name has been updated so it is now Paradiplogrammus enneactis. So my suggestion is that you are dealing with the female mangrove dragonet.

Looking forward to what other interesting finds you have hidden in your collection.

Bart

You appear to have done a lot of digging for me for which I am most grateful. Yes a tricky one. On Aque's advice, have sent it to Dr Fricke in Germany who is FB's main collaborator on Dragonets. Will keep you posted

Thanks again

Jack also suggested I contact Ron, which I did just before reading your post. Assuming we are right then we can fix the current error in fishbase and get proper images for both genders. While all the dragonet reading is still fresh in my mind I will make some pages for my website and would like to include your image for it. I've also done a lot of reading this morning on sweepers for which a big revision is coming up.

Bart

Bart is getting good at this - Dr Fricke confirms a Mangrove Dragonet, Callionymus enneactis.